Criticism of multiculturalism

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_multiculturalism 

Criticism of multiculturalism questions the ideal of the hegemonic maintenance of distinct ethnic cultures within a country. Multiculturalism is a particular subject of debate in certain European nations that are associated with the idea of a nation state. Critics of multiculturalism may argue against cultural integration of different ethnic and cultural groups to the existing laws and values of the country. Alternatively critics may argue for assimilation of different ethnic and cultural groups to a single national identity.

Multiculturalism and Islam

Main article: Multiculturalism and Islam

In an article in the Hudson Review, Bruce Bawer writes about what he sees as a developing distaste toward the idea and policies of multiculturalism in Europe, especially, as stated earlier, in the Netherlands, Denmark, United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Austria and Germany. The belief behind this backlash on multiculturalism is that it creates friction within society.

Australia

Main article: Multiculturalism in Australia

Rifts within Australian society, right through history, whether between the continent's Indigenous people and the European settler population or, in recent times, inter-ethnic tension manifest in the form of riots, street violence and ethnic gangs pose major challenges to multiculturalism in the country.

The response to multiculturalism in Australia has been varied. A nationalist, anti-mass immigration party, the One Nation Party, was formed by Pauline Hanson in the late 1990s. The party enjoyed brief electoral success, most notably in its home state of Queensland, but became electorally marginalized until its resurgence in 2016. In the late 1990s, One Nation called for the abolition of multiculturalism alleging that it represented "a threat to the very basis of the Australian culture, identity and shared values", arguing that there was "no reason why migrant cultures should be maintained at the expense of our shared, national culture."

An Australian Federal Government proposal in 2006 to introduce a compulsory citizenship test, which would assess English skills and knowledge of Australian values, sparked renewed debate over the future of multiculturalism in Australia. Andrew Robb, then Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, told a conference in November 2006 that some Australians worried the term "multicultural" had been transformed by interest groups into a philosophy that put "allegiances to original culture ahead of national loyalty, a philosophy which fosters separate development, a federation of ethnic cultures, not one community". He added: "A community of separate cultures fosters a rights mentality, rather than a responsibilities mentality. It is divisive. It works against quick and effective integration." The Australian citizenship test commenced in October 2007 for all new citizens between the ages of 18 and 60.

In January 2007, the Howard Government removed the word "multicultural" from the name of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, changing its name to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

Intellectual critique

The earliest academic critics of multiculturalism in Australia were the philosophers Lachlan Chipman and Frank Knopfelmacher, sociologist Tanya Birrell and the political scientist Raymond Sestito. Chipman and Knopfelmacher were concerned with threats to social cohesion, while Birrell's concern was that multiculturalism obscures the social costs associated with large scale immigration that fall most heavily on the most recently arrived and unskilled immigrants. Sestito's arguments were based on the role of political parties. He argued that political parties were instrumental in pursuing multicultural policies, and that these policies would put strain on the political system and would not promote better understanding in the Australian community.

It was the high-profile historian Geoffrey Blainey, however, who first achieved mainstream recognition for the anti-multiculturalist cause when he wrote that multiculturalism threatened to transform Australia into a "cluster of tribes". In his 1984 book All for Australia, Blainey criticised multiculturalism for tending to "emphasise the rights of ethnic minorities at the expense of the majority of Australians" and also for tending to be "anti-British", even though "people from the United Kingdom and Ireland form the dominant class of pre-war immigrants and the largest single group of post-war immigrants."

According to Blainey, such a policy, with its "emphasis on what is different and on the rights of the new minority rather than the old majority," was unnecessarily creating division and threatened national cohesion. He argued that "the evidence is clear that many multicultural societies have failed and that the human cost of the failure has been high" and warned that "we should think very carefully about the perils of converting Australia into a giant multicultural laboratory for the assumed benefit of the peoples of the world."

In one of his numerous criticisms of multiculturalism, Blainey wrote:

For the millions of Australians who have no other nation to fall back upon, multiculturalism is almost an insult. It is divisive. It threatens social cohesion. It could, in the long-term, also endanger Australia's military security because it sets up enclaves which in a crisis could appeal to their own homelands for help.

Blainey remained a persistent critic of multiculturalism into the 1990s, denouncing multiculturalism as "morally, intellectually and economically ... a sham".

The late historian John Hirst was another intellectual critic of multiculturalism. He has argued that while multiculturalism might serve the needs of ethnic politics and the demands of certain ethnic groups for government funding for the promotion of their separate ethnic identity, it was a perilous concept on which to base national policy.

Critics associated with the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University have argued that both Right and Left factions in the Australian Labor Party have adopted a multicultural stance for the purposes of increasing their support within the party. A manifestation of this embrace of multiculturalism has been the creation of ethnic branches within the Labor Party and ethnic branch stacking.

Following the upsurge of support for the One Nation Party in 1996, Lebanese-born Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage published a critique in 1997 of Australian multiculturalism in the book White Nation.

Canada

Main article: Multiculturalism in Canada

Toronto's Chinatown is an ethnic enclave located in the city centre.

Many Québécois, despite an official national bilingualism policy, insist that multiculturalism threatens to reduce them to just another ethnic group. Quebec's policy seeks to promote interculturalism, welcoming people of all origins while insisting that they integrate into Quebec's majority French-speaking society. In 2008, a Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, headed by sociologist Gerard Bouchard and philosopher Charles Taylor, recognized that Quebec is a de facto pluralist society, but that the Canadian multiculturalism model "does not appear well suited to conditions in Quebec". The Premier of Quebec François Legault openly opposes multiculturalism as a policy, stating that putting all cultures on the same level hurts Quebec and their ability to define themselves as a distinct nation. Quebec Parliament have also passed bills that directly oppose Federal policies of multiculturalism, such as Bill 21 which prevents people who wear religious symbols from participating as public servants.

According to a study conducted by The University of Victoria, many Canadians do not feel a strong sense of belonging in Canada, or cannot integrate themselves into society as a result of ethnic enclaves. Many immigrants to Canada choose to live in ethnic enclaves because it can be much easier than fitting in with mainstream Canadian culture.

The leader of the Peoples Party of Canada, Maxime Bernier, has criticized the policy of "extreme multiculturalism". Examples of this would be the naming of a park after foreign historical figures. Bernier believes that diversity is good, but not the 'our' strength. He fears that immigrants with different cultures will have different values, and that the celebration of diversity promotes disunity. His political party has proposed cutting all government funding towards policies of multiculturalism, and utilizing funding and resources towards integration. Additionally, they would face-to-face interviews to be conducted on all immigration candidates to ensure their values align with "Canadian Values".

Neil Bissoondath in his book Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada, argues that official multiculturalism limits the freedom of minority members, by confining them to cultural and geographic ethnic enclaves. He also argues that cultures are very complex, and must be transmitted through close family and kin relations. To him, the government view of cultures as being about festivals and cuisine is a crude oversimplification that leads to easy stereotyping.

Daniel Stoffman's book Who Gets In questions the policy of Canadian multiculturalism. Stoffman points out that many cultural practices, such as allowing dog meat to be served in restaurants and street cockfighting, are simply incompatible with what he regards as Canadian (i.e. Western) culture. He also raises concern about the number of recent immigrants who are not being linguistically integrated into Canada (i.e., not learning either English or French). He stresses that multiculturalism works better in theory than in practice and Canadians need to be far more assertive about valuing the "national identity of English-speaking Canada".

Germany

Criticisms of parallel societies established by some immigrant communities increasingly came to the fore in the German public discourse during the 1990s, giving rise to the concept of the Leitkultur ("lead culture"). In October 2010, amid a nationwide controversy about Thilo Sarrazin's bestselling book Deutschland schafft sich ab ("Germany is abolishing Itself"), chancellor Angela Merkel of the conservative Christian Democratic Union judged attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany to have "failed, utterly failed". She added: "The concept that we are now living side by side and are happy about it does not work". She continued to say that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany's culture and values. This has added to a growing debate within Germany on the levels of immigration, its effect on the country and the degree to which Muslim immigrants have integrated into German society. According to one poll around the time, one-third of Germans believed the country was "overrun by foreigners".

The principle of "Ius sanguinis" complicated citizenship for immigrants, as their dual citizenship was not recognized. This particularly affected the Turkish community in Germany as it led to political setbacks, such as losing in elections. Despite many efforts, there has been a growing disdain towards multiculturalism, accompanied by the rise of far-right parties in Germany. Thus, to reduce populist agendas, there is a growing importance for multicultural policies in addressing the needs of minority groups and immigrants in Germany to improve social cohesion and integration.

Italy

Italy has recently seen a substantial rise in immigration and an influx of African immigrants.

Many intellectuals have opposed multiculturalism, including Ida Magli, professor emeritus of cultural anthropology at the University of Rome. She was a contributor to the weekly L'Espresso and was a columnist for the dailies La Repubblica and Il Giornale. She expressed criticism of multicultural societies.

Another figure opposing multiculturalism was Oriana Fallaci, an Italian journalist, author, and political interviewer. A partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career. Fallaci became famous worldwide for her coverage of war and revolution, and her interviews with many world leaders during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. After the September 11 attacks, she returned to the spotlight after writing a series of controversial articles and books critical of Islam and immigration.

Japan

Japanese society, with its homogeneity, has traditionally rejected any need to recognize ethnic differences in Japan, even as such claims have been rejected by such ethnic minorities as the Ainu and Ryukyuans. Former Japanese Prime Minister (Deputy Prime Minister as of 26 December 2012) Taro Aso has called Japan a "one race" nation.

Malaysia

See also: Status of religious freedom in Malaysia

Malaysia is a multicultural society with a Muslim Malay majority and substantial Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indian minorities. Criticisms of multiculturalism have been periodically sparked by the entrenched constitutional position the Malay ethnicity enjoys through, inter alia, the Malaysian social contract. Contrary to other countries, in Malaysia affirmative action is often tailored to the needs of the Malay majority population. In 2006, the forced removal of Hindu temples across the country has led to accusations of "an unofficial policy of Hindu temple-cleansing in Malaysia".

Netherlands

Main article: Multiculturalism in the Netherlands

Legal philosopher Paul Cliteur attacked multiculturalism in his book The Philosophy of Human Rights. Cliteur rejects all political correctness on the issue: Western culture, the Rechtsstaat (rule of law), and human rights are superior to non-Western culture and values. They are the product of the Enlightenment. Cliteur sees non-Western cultures not as merely different but as anachronistic. He sees multiculturalism primarily as an unacceptable ideology of cultural relativism, which would lead to acceptance of barbaric practices, including those brought to the Western World by immigrants. Cliteur lists honor killings, torture, oppression of women, homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, gangs, female genital cutting, discrimination by immigrants, and the death penalty. Cliteur compares multiculturalism to the moral acceptance of Auschwitz, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and the Ku Klux Klan.

In 2000, Paul Scheffer—a member of the Labour Party and subsequently a professor of urban studies—published his essay "The multicultural tragedy", an essay critical of both immigration and multiculturalism. Scheffer is a committed supporter of the nation-state, assuming that homogeneity and integration are necessary for a society: the presence of immigrants undermines this. A society does have a finite "absorptive capacity" for those from other cultures, he says, but this has been exceeded in the Netherlands. He specifically cites failure to assimilate, spontaneous ethnic segregation, adaptation problems such as school drop-out, unemployment, and high crime rates (see immigration and crime), and opposition to secularism among Muslim immigrants as the main problems resulting from immigration.

United Kingdom

With considerable immigration after the Second World War making the UK an increasingly ethnically and racially diverse state, race relations policies have been developed that broadly reflect the principles of multiculturalism, although there is no official national commitment to the concept. This model has faced criticism on the grounds that it has failed to sufficiently promote social integration, although some commentators have questioned the dichotomy between diversity and integration that this critique presumes. It has been argued that the UK government has since 2001, moved away from policy characterised by multiculturalism and towards the assimilation of minority communities.

Opposition has grown to state sponsored multicultural policies, with some believing that it has been a costly failure. Critics of the policy come from many parts of British society. There is now a debate in the UK over whether explicit multiculturalism and "social cohesion and inclusion" are in fact mutually exclusive. In the wake of the 7 July 2005 London bombings David Davis, the opposition Conservative shadow home secretary, called on the government to scrap its "outdated" policy of multiculturalism.

The British columnist Leo McKinstry has persistently criticized multiculturalism, stating that "Britain is now governed by a suicide cult bent on wiping out any last vestige of nationhood" and called multiculturalism a "profoundly disturbing social experiment".

McKinstry also wrote:

We are paying a terrible price for the creed of Left-wing politicians. They pose as champions of progress yet their fixation with multiculturalism is dragging us into a new dark age. In many of our cities, social solidarity is being replaced by divisive tribalism, democracy by identity politics. Real integration is impossible when ethnic groups are encouraged to cling to customs, practices, even languages from their homeland.

Trevor Phillips, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality, who has called for an official end to multicultural policy, has criticised "politically correct liberals for their "misguided" pandering to the ethnic lobby".

Journalist Ed West argued in his 2013 book, The Diversity Illusion, that the British political establishment had uncritically embraced multiculturalism without proper consideration of the downsides of ethnic diversity. He wrote:

Everyone in a position of power held the same opinion. Diversity was a good in itself, so making Britain truly diverse would enrich it and bring 'significant cultural contributions', reflecting a widespread belief among the ruling classes that multiculturalism and cultural, racial and religious diversity were morally positive things whatever the consequences. This is the unthinking assumption held by almost the entire political, media and education establishment. It is the diversity illusion.

West has also argued:

Advocates of multiculturalism argue that immigrants prefer to stick together because of racism and the fear of racial violence, as well as the bonds of community. This is perfectly reasonable, but if this is the case, why not the same for natives too? If multiculturalism is right because minorities feel better among themselves, why have mass immigration at all, since it must obviously make everyone miserable? (And if diversity 'enriches' and strengthens, why integrate, since that will only reduce diversity?) All the arguments for multiculturalism—that people feel safer, more comfortable among people of the same group, and that they need their own cultural identity—are arguments against immigration, since English people must also feel the same. If people categorised as "white Britons" are not afforded that indulgence because they are a majority, do they attain it when they become a minority?

In the May 2004 edition of Prospect Magazine, the editor David Goodhart temporarily couched the debate on multiculturalism in terms of whether a modern welfare state and a "good society" is sustainable as its citizens become increasingly diverse.

In November 2005, John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, stated, "Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me: let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains." The Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali was also critical, calling for the Church to regain a prominent position in public life and blaming the "newfangled and insecurely founded doctrine of multiculturalism" for entrenching the segregation of communities.

Whilst minority cultures are allowed to remain distinct, British culture and traditions are sometimes perceived as exclusive and adapted accordingly, often without the consent of the local population.^{[citation needed]} For instance, Birmingham City Council was heavily criticised when it was alleged to have renamed Christmas as "Winterval" in 1998, although in truth it had done no such thing.

In August 2006, the community and local government secretary Ruth Kelly made a speech perceived as signalling the end of multiculturalism as official policy. In November 2006, Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that Britain has certain "essential values" and that these are a "duty". He did not reject multiculturalism outright, but he included British heritage among the essential values:

When it comes to our essential values—belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage—then that is where we come together, it is what we hold in common.

United States

The US Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at further restricting Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Italians and Slavs, who had begun to enter the country in large numbers starting in the 1890s.

Many criticisms were expressed in the 1980s and 1990s, from both the left and right. Criticisms come from a wide variety of perspectives, but predominantly from the standpoint of liberal individualism, from American conservatives concerned about shared traditional values, and from a national unity perspective.

A prominent criticism in the US, later echoed in Europe, Canada and Australia, was that multiculturalism undermined national unity, hindered social integration and cultural assimilation, and led to the fragmentation of society into several ethnic factions (Balkanization).

In 1991, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., a former advisor to the Kennedy and other US administrations and Pulitzer Prize winner, published a book critical of multiculturalism with the title The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society.

In his 1991 work, Illiberal Education, Dinesh D'Souza argues that the entrenchment of multiculturalism in American universities undermined the universalist values that liberal education once attempted to foster. In particular, he was disturbed by the growth of ethnic studies programs (e.g., black studies).

The late Samuel P. Huntington, political scientist and author, known for his Clash of Civilizations theory, described multiculturalism as "basically an anti-Western ideology." According to Huntington, multiculturalism had "attacked the identification of the United States with Western civilization, denied the existence of a common American culture, and promoted racial, ethnic, and other subnational cultural identities and groupings." Huntington outlined the risks he associated with multiculturalism in his 2004 book Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity.

Diversity and social trust

Harvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam conducted a nearly decade long study on how diversity affects social trust. In the presence of such ethnic diversity, Putnam maintains that "we hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who don't look like us."

Antebellum South

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antebellum_South

The Antebellum South era (from Latin: ante bellum, lit. 'before the war') was a period in the history of the Southern United States that extended from the conclusion of the War of 1812 to the start of the American Civil War in 1861. This era was marked by the prevalent practice of slavery and the associated societal norms it cultivated. Over the course of this period, Southern leaders underwent a transformation in their perspective on slavery. Initially regarded as an awkward and temporary institution, it gradually evolved into a defended concept, with proponents arguing for its positive merits, while simultaneously vehemently opposing the burgeoning abolitionist movement.

Society was stratified, inegalitarian, and perceived by immigrants as lacking in opportunities. Consequently, the manufacturing base lagged behind that of the non-slave states. Wealth inequality grew as the larger landholders took the greater share of the profits generated by enslaved persons, which also helped to entrench their power as a political class.

As the country expanded westward, slavery's propagation became a major issue in national politics, eventually boiling over into the Civil War. In the years that followed the Civil War, the war was romanticized by historical revisionists to protect three central assertions: that the Confederate cause was heroic, that enslaved people were happy and satisfied, and that slavery was not the primary cause of the war. This phenomenon has continued to the present day to contribute to racism, gender roles, and religious attitudes in the South, and to a lesser extent in the rest of the country.

History

In the 18th century, the Atlantic slave trade brought enslaved Africans to the South during the colonial period as a source of labor for the harvesting of crops. There were almost 700,000 enslaved persons in the U.S. in 1790, which was approximately 18 percent of the total population or roughly one in six people. By the end of the 18th century, slavery was in decline, with states in the North beginning to ban the institution and planters in the South realizing that they had no crops successful enough to make slavery financially viable. This would change with the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in the mid-1790s, which changed a once-tedious manual cleaning and fiber separation process into a faster, less labor-intensive procedure. Suddenly, cotton could be processed more cheaply and efficiently, resulting in slavery becoming very profitable and a large plantation system developing to support the expanding industry. In the 15 years between the invention of the cotton gin and the passage of the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, the slave trade increased and slavery became more prevalent in the southern United States.

Economic structure

The Antebellum South saw large expansions in agriculture during the early 19th century, spurred on by increased demand for cotton for the new textile factories of the industrial North. In light of the successful cotton industry, anti-industrial and anti-urban attitudes resulting from a belief that agrarian life would continue to be the best way forward, the Southern economy experienced little industrialization or other manufacturing development. The Southern economy was characterized by a low level of capital accumulation (largely slave-labor-based) and a shortage of liquid capital, which led to a South dependent on export trade. This was in contrast to the North and West, which were able to rely on their own domestic markets. Since the Southern domestic market consisted primarily of plantations focused on a few specific crops, Southern states imported sustenance commodities from the West and manufactured goods from England and the North.

The plantation system can be seen as the factory system applied to agriculture, with a concentration of labor under skilled management. But while the industrial manufacturing-based labor economy of the North was driven by growing demand, maintenance of the plantation economic system depended upon slave labor, which was abundant and cheap.

The five major commodities of the Southern agricultural economy were cotton, grain, tobacco, sugar, and rice, with cotton the leading cash crop. These commodities were concentrated in the Deep South (Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana).

Inefficiency of slave-based agriculture

See also: Treatment of slaves in the United States

The leading historian of the era was Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, who studied slavery not so much as a political issue between North and South, but as a social and economic system. He focused on the large plantations that dominated the South.

Phillips addressed the unprofitability of slave labor and slavery's ill effects on the Southern economy. An example of pioneering comparative work was A Jamaica Slave Plantation (1914). His methods inspired the "Phillips school" of slavery studies, between 1900 and 1950.

Phillips argued that large-scale plantation slavery was inefficient and not progressive. It had reached its geographical limits by 1860 or so, and therefore eventually had to fade away (as happened in Brazil). In The Decadence of the Plantation System (1910), he argued that slavery was an unprofitable relic that persisted because it produced social status, honor, and political power. "Most farmers in the South had small-to-medium-sized farms with few slaves, but the large plantation owner's wealth, often reflected in the number of slaves they owned, afforded them considerable prestige and political power."

Phillips contended that masters treated enslaved persons relatively well; his views on that issue were later sharply rejected by Kenneth M. Stampp. His conclusions about the economic decline of slavery were challenged in 1958 by Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer in a landmark study published in the Journal of Political Economy. Their arguments were further developed by Robert Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, who argued in their 1974 book, Time on the Cross, that slavery was both efficient and profitable, as long as the price of cotton was high enough. In turn, Fogel and Engerman came under attack from other historians of slavery.

Effects of economy on social structure

See also: The Impending Crisis of the South

As slavery began to displace indentured servitude as the principal supply of labor in the plantation systems of the South, the economic nature of the institution of slavery aided in the increased inequality of wealth seen in the antebellum South. The demand for slave labor and the U.S. ban on importing more slaves from Africa drove up prices for slaves, making it profitable for smaller farms in older settled areas such as Virginia to sell their slaves further south and west. The actuarial risk, or the potential loss in investment of owning slaves from death, disability, etc. was much greater for small plantation owners. Accentuated by the rise in price of slaves seen just prior to the Civil War, the overall costs associated with owning slaves to the individual plantation owner led to the concentration of slave ownership seen at the eve of the Civil War.

Social structure

Much of the Antebellum South was rural, and in line with the plantation system, largely agricultural. With the exception of New Orleans, Charleston, Richmond, and Louisville the slave states had no large cities, and the urban population of the South could not compare to that of the Northeast, or even that of the agrarian West. This led to a sharp division in class in the southern states, between the landowning "master" class, yeoman farmers, poor whites, and slaves; while in the northern and western states, much of the social spectrum was dominated by a wide range of different laboring classes.

Wealth inequality

The conclusion that, while both the North and the South were characterized by a high degree of inequality during the plantation era, the wealth distribution was much more unequal in the South than in the North arises from studies concerned with the equality of land, slave, and wealth distribution. For example, in certain states and counties, due to the concentration of landholding and slave holding, which were highly correlated, six percent of landowners ended up commanding one-third of the gross income and an even higher portion of the net income. The majority of landowners, who had smaller scale plantations, saw a disproportionately small portion in revenues generated by the slavery-driven plantation system.

Effects of social structure on economy

While the two largest classes in the South included land- and slave-owners and slaves, various strata of social classes existed within and between the two. In examining class relations and the banking system in the South, the economic exploitation of slave labor can be seen to arise from a need to maintain certain conditions for the existence of slavery and from a need for each of the remaining social strata to remain in status quo. In order to meet conditions where slavery may continue to exist, members of the master class (e.g., white, landowning, slave-owning) had to compete with other members of the master class to maximize the surplus labor extracted from slaves. Likewise, in order to remain within the same class, members of the master class (and each subsumed class below) must expand their claim on revenues derived from the slave labor surplus.

Mercantilist underpinnings

Mercantilist ideologies largely explain the rise of the plantation system in the United States. In the 16th and 17th centuries under mercantilism, rulers of nations believed that the accumulation of wealth through a favorable balance of trade was the best way to ensure power. As a result, several European nations began to colonize the Americas to take advantage of rich natural resources and encourage exports.

One example of England utilizing its American colonies for economic gain was tobacco. When tobacco was first discovered as a recreational substance, there was a widespread social backlash in England, spearheaded by King James I himself. By the middle of the 17th century, however, Parliament had realized the revenue potential of tobacco and quickly changed its official moral stance towards its use. As a result, tobacco plantations sprung up across the American South in large numbers to support demand in Europe. By 1670, more than half of all tobacco shipped to England was being re-exported to other countries throughout Europe at a premium. In similar ways, the English were able to profit from other American staple crops, such as cotton, rice, and indigo, which "fueled the expansion of the American plantation colonies, transformed the Atlantic into an English inland sea, and led to the creation of the first British Empire."

Many claim that being a part of the British mercantilist system was in the best economic interest of the American colonies as well, as they would not have been able to survive as independent economic entities. Robert Haywood, in his article "Mercantilism and South Carolina Agriculture, 1700–1763", argues that "it was unthinkable that any trade could prosper in the straight-jacket of regimented and restricted international trade, without the guiding hand of a powerful protecting government."

Adverse economic effects

The plantation system created an environment for the South to experience an economic boom in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. However, reliance on both the plantation system and more widespread slave labor, left the South in a precarious economic situation. This was the subject of the highly influential 1857 book The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, by Hinton Rowan Helper. Following the end of the Civil War and into Reconstruction era (1865–1877), the South experienced economic devastation. Some states that relied less heavily on the plantation system managed to fare better following its downfall. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips contends that the plantation "sadly restricted the opportunity of such men as were of better industrial quality than was required for the field gangs." Essentially, men who would have been otherwise capable of performing other skilled jobs were nonetheless relegated to field work because of the nature of the system.

A 1984 journal article by Claudia Goldin and Kenneth Sokoloff suggested that the South misallocated labor compared to the North, which more eagerly embraced women and child labor in its factories to push forward industrialization due to their relative value to Northern agriculture being lesser than in Southern agriculture.

While the South still attracted immigrants from Europe, the North attracted far more during the early-to-mid 1800s, such that by the time of the American Civil War, the population of the North far exceeded the non-enslaved population of the South per the 1860 United States census. Colin Woodard argued in his 2011 book American Nations that the South was relatively less successful in attracting immigrants due to the South's reputation as a more stratified society. Striving immigrants who sought economic advancement thus tended to favor the more egalitarian North, compared to the more aristocratic South, where there were fewer perceived opportunities for advancement.

History of trigonometry

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_trigonometry 

Early study of triangles can be traced to Egyptian mathematics (Rhind Mathematical Papyrus) and Babylonian mathematics during the 2nd millennium BC. Systematic study of trigonometric functions began in Hellenistic mathematics, reaching India as part of Hellenistic astronomy. In Indian astronomy, the study of trigonometric functions flourished in the Gupta period, especially due to Aryabhata (sixth century AD), who discovered the sine function, cosine function, and versine function.

During the Middle Ages, the study of trigonometry continued in Islamic mathematics, by mathematicians such as al-Khwarizmi and Abu al-Wafa. The knowledge of trigonometric functions passed to Arabia from the Indian Subcontinent. It became an independent discipline in the Islamic world, where all six trigonometric functions were known. Translations of Arabic and Greek texts led to trigonometry being adopted as a subject in the Latin West beginning in the Renaissance with Regiomontanus.

The development of modern trigonometry shifted during the western Age of Enlightenment, beginning with 17th-century mathematics (Isaac Newton and James Stirling) and reaching its modern form with Leonhard Euler (1748).

Etymology

The term "trigonometry" was derived from Greek τρίγωνον trigōnon, "triangle" and μέτρον metron, "measure".

The modern words "sine" and "cosine" are derived from the Latin word sinus via mistranslation from Arabic (see Sine and cosine § Etymology). Particularly Fibonacci's sinus rectus arcus proved influential in establishing the term.

The word tangent comes from Latin tangens meaning "touching", since the line touches the circle of unit radius, whereas secant stems from Latin secans "cutting" since the line cuts the circle (see the figure at Pythagorean identities).

The prefix "co-" (in "cosine", "cotangent", "cosecant") is found in Edmund Gunter's Canon triangulorum (1620), which defines the cosinus as an abbreviation for the sinus complementi (sine of the complementary angle) and proceeds to define the cotangens similarly.

The words "minute" and "second" are derived from the Latin phrases partes minutae primae and partes minutae secundae. These roughly translate to "first small parts" and "second small parts".

Ancient

Ancient Near East

The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians had known of theorems on the ratios of the sides of similar triangles for many centuries. However, as pre-Hellenic societies lacked the concept of an angle measure, they were limited to studying the sides of triangles instead.

The Babylonian astronomers kept detailed records on the rising and setting of stars, the motion of the planets, and the solar and lunar eclipses, all of which required familiarity with angular distances measured on the celestial sphere. Based on one interpretation of the Plimpton 322 cuneiform tablet (c. 1900 BC), some have even asserted that the ancient Babylonians had a table of secants but does not work in this context as without using circles and angles in the situation modern trigonometric notations will not apply. There is, however, much debate as to whether it is a table of Pythagorean triples, a solution of quadratic equations, or a trigonometric table.

The Egyptians, on the other hand, used a primitive form of trigonometry for building pyramids in the 2nd millennium BC. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, written by the Egyptian scribe Ahmes (c. 1680–1620 BC), contains the following problem related to trigonometry:

"If a pyramid is 250 cubits high and the side of its base 360 cubits long, what is its seked?"

Ahmes' solution to the problem is the ratio of half the side of the base of the pyramid to its height, or the run-to-rise ratio of its face. In other words, the quantity he found for the seked is the cotangent of the angle to the base of the pyramid and its face.

Classical antiquity

The chord of an angle subtends the arc of the angle.

Ancient Greek and Hellenistic mathematicians made use of the chord. Given a circle and an arc on the circle, the chord is the line that subtends the arc. A chord's perpendicular bisector passes through the center of the circle and bisects the angle. One half of the bisected chord is the sine of one half the bisected angle, that is,

${\displaystyle \mathrm{c}\mathrm{h}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{d}\theta =2r\sin \frac{\theta }{2},}$

and consequently the sine function is also known as the half-chord. Due to this relationship, a number of trigonometric identities and theorems that are known today were also known to Hellenistic mathematicians, but in their equivalent chord form.

Although there is no trigonometry in the works of Euclid and Archimedes, in the strict sense of the word, there are theorems presented in a geometric way (rather than a trigonometric way) that are equivalent to specific trigonometric laws or formulas. For instance, propositions twelve and thirteen of book two of the Elements are the laws of cosines for obtuse and acute angles, respectively. Theorems on the lengths of chords are applications of the law of sines. And Archimedes' theorem on broken chords is equivalent to formulas for sines of sums and differences of angles. To compensate for the lack of a table of chords, mathematicians of Aristarchus' time would sometimes use the statement that, in modern notation, sin α/sin β < α/β < tan α/tan β whenever 0° < β < α < 90°, now known as Aristarchus's inequality.

The first trigonometric table was apparently compiled by Hipparchus of Nicaea (180 – 125 BC), who is now consequently known as "the father of trigonometry." Hipparchus was the first to tabulate the corresponding values of arc and chord for a series of angles.

Although it is not known when the systematic use of the 360° circle came into mathematics, it is known that the systematic introduction of the 360° circle came a little after Aristarchus of Samos composed On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon (c. 260 BC), since he measured an angle in terms of a fraction of a quadrant. It seems that the systematic use of the 360° circle is largely due to Hipparchus and his table of chords. Hipparchus may have taken the idea of this division from Hypsicles who had earlier divided the day into 360 parts, a division of the day that may have been suggested by Babylonian astronomy. In ancient astronomy, the zodiac had been divided into twelve "signs" or thirty-six "decans". A seasonal cycle of roughly 360 days could have corresponded to the signs and decans of the zodiac by dividing each sign into thirty parts and each decan into ten parts. It is due to the Babylonian sexagesimal numeral system that each degree is divided into sixty minutes and each minute is divided into sixty seconds.

Menelaus' theorem

Menelaus of Alexandria (c. 100 AD) wrote in three books his Sphaerica. In Book I, he established a basis for spherical triangles analogous to the Euclidean basis for plane triangles. He established a theorem that is without Euclidean analogue, that two spherical triangles are congruent if corresponding angles are equal, but he did not distinguish between congruent and symmetric spherical triangles. Another theorem that he establishes is that the sum of the angles of a spherical triangle is greater than 180°. Book II of Sphaerica applies spherical geometry to astronomy. And Book III contains the "theorem of Menelaus". He further gave his famous "rule of six quantities".

Later, Claudius Ptolemy (c. 90 – c. 168 AD) expanded upon Hipparchus' Chords in a Circle in his Almagest, or the Mathematical Syntaxis. The Almagest is primarily a work on astronomy, and astronomy relies on trigonometry. Ptolemy's table of chords gives the lengths of chords of a circle of diameter 120 as a function of the number of degrees n in the corresponding arc of the circle, for n ranging from 1/2 to 180 by increments of 1/2. The thirteen books of the Almagest are the most influential and significant trigonometric work of all antiquity. A theorem that was central to Ptolemy's calculation of chords was what is still known today as Ptolemy's theorem, that the sum of the products of the opposite sides of a cyclic quadrilateral is equal to the product of the diagonals. A special case of Ptolemy's theorem appeared as proposition 93 in Euclid's Data. Ptolemy's theorem leads to the equivalent of the four sum-and-difference formulas for sine and cosine that are today known as Ptolemy's formulas, although Ptolemy himself used chords instead of sine and cosine. Ptolemy further derived the equivalent of the half-angle formula

${\displaystyle {\sin }^2\left(\frac{x}{2}\right)=\frac{1-\cos (x)}{2}.}$

Ptolemy used these results to create his trigonometric tables, but whether these tables were derived from Hipparchus' work cannot be determined.

Neither the tables of Hipparchus nor those of Ptolemy have survived to the present day, although descriptions by other ancient authors leave little doubt that they once existed.

Indian mathematics

See also: Indian Mathematics and Indian astronomy

Some of the early and very significant developments of trigonometry were in India. Influential works from the 4th–5th century AD, known as the Siddhantas (of which there were five, the most important of which is the Surya Siddhanta) first defined the sine as the modern relationship between half an angle and half a chord, while also defining the cosine, versine, and inverse sine. Soon afterwards, another Indian mathematician and astronomer, Aryabhata (476–550 AD), collected and expanded upon the developments of the Siddhantas in an important work called the Aryabhatiya. The Siddhantas and the Aryabhatiya contain the earliest surviving tables of sine values and versine (1 − cosine) values, in 3.75° intervals from 0° to 90°, to an accuracy of 4 decimal places. They used the words jya for sine, kojya for cosine, utkrama-jya for versine, and otkram jya for inverse sine. The words jya and kojya eventually became sine and cosine respectively after a mistranslation described above.

In the 7th century, Bhaskara I produced a formula for calculating the sine of an acute angle without the use of a table. He also gave the following approximation formula for sin(x), which had a relative error of less than 1.9%:

${\displaystyle \sin x\approx \frac{16x(\pi -x)}{5{\pi }^2-4x(\pi -x)},\left(0\le x\le \pi \right).}$

Later in the 7th century, Brahmagupta redeveloped the formula

${\displaystyle 1-{\sin }^2(x)={\cos }^2(x)={\sin }^2\left(\frac{\pi }{2}-x\right)}$

(also derived earlier, as mentioned above) and the Brahmagupta interpolation formula for computing sine values.

Madhava (c. 1400) made early strides in the analysis of trigonometric functions and their infinite series expansions. He developed the concepts of the power series and Taylor series, and produced the power series expansions of sine, cosine, tangent, and arctangent. Using the Taylor series approximations of sine and cosine, he produced a sine table to 12 decimal places of accuracy and a cosine table to 9 decimal places of accuracy. He also gave the power series of π and the angle, radius, diameter, and circumference of a circle in terms of trigonometric functions. His works were expanded by his followers at the Kerala School up to the 16th century.

No.	Series	Name	Western discoverers of the series and approximate dates of discovery
1	$${\displaystyle \sin x=x-\frac{x^3}{3!}+\frac{x^5}{5!}+\frac{x^7}{7!}+\dots }$$	Madhava's sine series	Isaac Newton (1670) and Wilhelm Leibniz (1676)
2	${\displaystyle \cos x=1-\frac{x^2}{2!}+\frac{x^4}{4!}+\frac{x^6}{6!}+\dots }$	Madhava's cosine series	Isaac Newton (1670) and Wilhelm Leibniz (1676)
3	${\displaystyle \arctan x=x-\frac{x^3}{3}+\frac{x^5}{5}-\frac{x^7}{7}+\dots }$	Madhava's arctangent series	James Gregory (1671) and Wilhelm Leibniz (1676)

The Indian text the Yuktibhāṣā contains proof for the expansion of the sine and cosine functions and the derivation and proof of the power series for inverse tangent, discovered by Madhava. The Yuktibhāṣā also contains rules for finding the sines and the cosines of the sum and difference of two angles.

Chinese mathematics

Guo Shoujing (1231–1316)

In China, Aryabhata's table of sines were translated into the Chinese mathematical book of the Kaiyuan Zhanjing, compiled in 718 AD during the Tang dynasty. Although the Chinese excelled in other fields of mathematics such as solid geometry, binomial theorem, and complex algebraic formulas, early forms of trigonometry were not as widely appreciated as in the earlier Greek, Hellenistic, Indian and Islamic worlds. Instead, the early Chinese used an empirical substitute known as chong cha, while practical use of plane trigonometry in using the sine, the tangent, and the secant were known. However, this embryonic state of trigonometry in China slowly began to change and advance during the Song dynasty (960–1279), where Chinese mathematicians began to express greater emphasis for the need of spherical trigonometry in calendrical science and astronomical calculations. The polymath Chinese scientist, mathematician and official Shen Kuo (1031–1095) used trigonometric functions to solve mathematical problems of chords and arcs. Victor J. Katz writes that in Shen's formula "technique of intersecting circles", he created an approximation of the arc s of a circle given the diameter d, sagitta v, and length c of the chord subtending the arc, the length of which he approximated as

${\displaystyle s=c+\frac{2v^2}{d}.}$

Sal Restivo writes that Shen's work in the lengths of arcs of circles provided the basis for spherical trigonometry developed in the 13th century by the mathematician and astronomer Guo Shoujing (1231–1316). As the historians L. Gauchet and Joseph Needham state, Guo Shoujing used spherical trigonometry in his calculations to improve the calendar system and Chinese astronomy. Along with a later 17th-century Chinese illustration of Guo's mathematical proofs, Needham states that:

Guo used a quadrangular spherical pyramid, the basal quadrilateral of which consisted of one equatorial and one ecliptic arc, together with two meridian arcs, one of which passed through the summer solstice point...By such methods he was able to obtain the du lü (degrees of equator corresponding to degrees of ecliptic), the ji cha (values of chords for given ecliptic arcs), and the cha lü (difference between chords of arcs differing by 1 degree).

Despite the achievements of Shen and Guo's work in trigonometry, another substantial work in Chinese trigonometry would not be published again until 1607, with the dual publication of Euclid's Elements by Chinese official and astronomer Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) and the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610).

Medieval

Islamic world

Page from The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing by Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (c. AD 820)

Previous works from India and Greece were later translated and expanded in the medieval Islamic world by Muslim mathematicians of mostly Persian and Arab descent, who enunciated a large number of theorems which freed the subject of trigonometry from dependence upon the complete quadrilateral, as was the case in Hellenistic mathematics due to the application of Menelaus' theorem. According to E. S. Kennedy, it was after this development in Islamic mathematics that "the first real trigonometry emerged, in the sense that only then did the object of study become the spherical or plane triangle, its sides and angles."

Methods dealing with spherical triangles were also known, particularly the method of Menelaus of Alexandria, who developed "Menelaus' theorem" to deal with spherical problems. However, E. S. Kennedy points out that while it was possible in pre-Islamic mathematics to compute the magnitudes of a spherical figure, in principle, by use of the table of chords and Menelaus' theorem, the application of the theorem to spherical problems was very difficult in practice. In order to observe holy days on the Islamic calendar in which timings were determined by phases of the moon, astronomers initially used Menelaus' method to calculate the place of the moon and stars, though this method proved to be clumsy and difficult. It involved setting up two intersecting right triangles; by applying Menelaus' theorem it was possible to solve one of the six sides, but only if the other five sides were known. To tell the time from the sun's altitude, for instance, repeated applications of Menelaus' theorem were required. For medieval Islamic astronomers, there was an obvious challenge to find a simpler trigonometric method.

In the early 9th century AD, Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī produced accurate sine and cosine tables. He was also a pioneer in spherical trigonometry. In 830 AD, Habash al-Hasib al-Marwazi discovered the tangent and the cotangent and produced the first table of these trigonometric functions. Muhammad ibn Jābir al-Harrānī al-Battānī (Albatenius) (853–929 AD) discovered the secant and the cosecant, and produced the first table of cosecants for each degree from 1° to 90°.

By the 10th century AD, in the work of Abū al-Wafā' al-Būzjānī, all six trigonometric functions were used. Abu al-Wafa had sine tables in 0.25° increments, to 8 decimal places of accuracy, and accurate tables of tangent values. He also developed the following trigonometric formula:

${\displaystyle \sin (2x)=2\sin (x)\cos (x)}$ (a special case of Ptolemy's angle-addition formula; see above)

In his original text, Abū al-Wafā' states: "If we want that, we multiply the given sine by the cosine minutes, and the result is half the sine of the double". Abū al-Wafā also established the angle addition and difference identities presented with complete proofs:

${\displaystyle \sin (\alpha \pm \beta )=\sqrt{{\sin }^2\alpha -(\sin \alpha \sin \beta {)}^2}\pm \sqrt{{\sin }^2\beta -(\sin \alpha \sin \beta {)}^2}}$

${\displaystyle \sin (\alpha \pm \beta )=\sin \alpha \cos \beta \pm \cos \alpha \sin \beta }$

For the second one, the text states: "We multiply the sine of each of the two arcs by the cosine of the other minutes. If we want the sine of the sum, we add the products, if we want the sine of the difference, we take their difference".

He also discovered the law of sines for spherical trigonometry:

${\displaystyle \frac{\sin A}{\sin a}=\frac{\sin B}{\sin b}=\frac{\sin C}{\sin c}.}$

Also in the late 10th and early 11th centuries AD, the Egyptian astronomer Ibn Yunus performed many careful trigonometric calculations and demonstrated the following trigonometric identity:

${\displaystyle \cos a\cos b=\frac{\cos (a+b)+\cos (a-b)}{2}}$

Al-Jayyani (989–1079) of al-Andalus wrote The book of unknown arcs of a sphere, which is considered "the first treatise on spherical trigonometry". It "contains formulae for right-handed triangles, the general law of sines, and the solution of a spherical triangle by means of the polar triangle." This treatise later had a "strong influence on European mathematics", and his "definition of ratios as numbers" and "method of solving a spherical triangle when all sides are unknown" are likely to have influenced Regiomontanus.

The method of triangulation was first developed by Muslim mathematicians, who applied it to practical uses such as surveying and Islamic geography, as described by Abu Rayhan Biruni in the early 11th century. Biruni himself introduced triangulation techniques to measure the size of the Earth and the distances between various places. In the late 11th century, Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) solved cubic equations using approximate numerical solutions found by interpolation in trigonometric tables. In the 13th century, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī was the first to treat trigonometry as a mathematical discipline independent from astronomy, and he developed spherical trigonometry into its present form. He listed the six distinct cases of a right-angled triangle in spherical trigonometry, and in his Book on the Complete Quadrilateral, he stated the law of sines for plane and spherical triangles, discovered the law of tangents for spherical triangles, and provided proofs for both these laws. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi has been described as the creator of trigonometry as a mathematical discipline in its own right.

The law of cosines, in geometric form, can be found as propositions II.12–13 in Euclid's Elements (c. 300 BC), but was not used for the solution of triangles per se. Medieval Islamic mathematicians developed a method for finding the third side of an arbitrary triangle given two sides and the included angle based on the same concept but more similar to the modern formulation of the law of cosines. A sketch of the method can be found in Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī's Book on the Complete Quadrilateral (c. 1250), and the same method is described in more detail in Jamshīd al-Kāshī's Key of Arithmetic (1427). Al-Kāshī also computed the sine of 1° accurate to 8 sexagesimal digits, and constructed the most accurate trigonometric tables to date, accurate to four sexagesimal places (equivalent to 8 decimal places) for each 1° of arc. Al-Kāshī presumably worked on Ulugh Beg's even more comprehensive trigonometric tables, with five-place (sexagesimal) entries for each minute of arc.

European renaissance

In 1342, Levi ben Gershon, known as Gersonides, wrote On Sines, Chords and Arcs, in particular proving the sine law for plane triangles and giving five-figure sine tables.

A simplified trigonometric table, the "toleta de marteloio", was used by sailors in the Mediterranean Sea during the 14th-15th Centuries to calculate navigation courses. It is described by Ramon Llull of Majorca in 1295, and laid out in the 1436 atlas of Venetian captain Andrea Bianco.

Regiomontanus was perhaps the first mathematician in Europe to treat trigonometry as a distinct mathematical discipline, in his De triangulis omnimodis written in 1464, as well as his later Tabulae directionum which included the tangent function, unnamed.

Modern

The Opus palatinum de triangulis of Georg Joachim Rheticus, a student of Copernicus, was probably the first in Europe to define trigonometric functions directly in terms of right triangles instead of circles, with tables for all six trigonometric functions; this work was finished by Rheticus' student Valentin Otho in 1596.

In the 17th century, Isaac Newton and James Stirling developed the general Newton–Stirling interpolation formula for trigonometric functions.

In the 18th century, Leonhard Euler's Introduction in analysin infinitorum (1748) was mostly responsible for establishing the analytic treatment of trigonometric functions in Europe, deriving their infinite series and presenting "Euler's formula" e^ix = cos x + i sin x. Euler used the near-modern abbreviations sin., cos., tang., cot., sec., and cosec. Prior to this, Roger Cotes had computed the derivative of sine in his Harmonia Mensurarum (1722). Also in the 18th century, Brook Taylor defined the general Taylor series and gave the series expansions and approximations for all six trigonometric functions. The works of James Gregory in the 17th century and Colin Maclaurin in the 18th century were also very influential in the development of trigonometric series.

In the 19th century, Joseph Fourier discovered the Fourier series during his attempts to find solutions to the heat equation, paving the way for Fourier and harmonic analysis.